


Lady's Choice

by cupiscent



Category: Thor (2011)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-08-01
Updated: 2011-08-01
Packaged: 2017-10-26 11:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,116
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/282426
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cupiscent/pseuds/cupiscent
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There are many reasons why Sif can't, and infinite reasons why Loki, always, can.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lady's Choice

**Author's Note:**

> _Then Sif went forward and poured out mead for Loki into a crystal cup and said:_
>
>>  _Welcome now, Loki, and take the crystal cup  
>  full of ancient mead,  
> you should admit, that of the children of the Æsir,  
> that I alone am blameless._
> 
>  _He took the horn and drank it down:
>
>> That indeed you would be, if you were so,  
> if you were shy and fierce towards men;  
> I alone know, as I think I do know,  
> your love beside Thor,  
> and that was the wicked Loki.
> 
> _\-- [The Loksasenna](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lokasenna)

Loki does it, mostly, to see if he can.

That's actually the reason he does an awful lot of the things he does. To see if he can.

Depressingly often the answer is: all too easily.

*

It took him a while to see it. It wasn't as though any of them lacked for companionship. If Volstagg could make them laugh (and he could) he was halfway home, there seemed to be a _line_ of women wanting to make Hogun smile, and Fandral laid on smarm with a trowel, which never seemed to offend his lovers the way it did Loki. Thor's seductions took only as long as a smile and a press of the lady's hand - on the rare occasions that didn't suffice, an arm around the waist inevitably decided it. (Broad, strong, implacably swinging her just a little closer to his body; either Asgard's women were all suckers for this sort of manhandling or he had an uncanny eye for the ones who were.) Loki himself had talked his way into more beds than any of them - including him - really thought should be possible.

And then there was Sif, who had her pick of the men of Asgard. She could have had _anyone_.

They'd made a game of it once - and only once - early on. She'd just proven herself upon the melee field, in fact, and they were all full of excess adrenaline, that Thor was purging by defeating all comers with his arm braced in the centre of the feasting table and a tankard in his other hand; that had Loki prowling the edges and eddies of the room; that brought Sif near to screaming conflict with one of her stubborn detractors.

When she'd stormed away, Loki found her fuming, slid in behind her, dangling a winecup over her shoulder and words in her ear: "He wants you."

She'd been glaring at the man, across the hall. Now her spine stiffened a little, her shoulders squared, but she didn't step away; her hand came up to trace fingers over the patterning of the goblet, but she didn't take its weight. "Rubbish," she said, but turned her ear a little more towards him. "He says I am unwomanly."

"But it excites him." Loki smiled, barely a breath away from her ear. "He won't fight you, because he's worried everyone will see, when you best him, how badly he wants you to put him on his knees."

The man in question glanced their way, as though idly, but his gaze raked across Loki for a moment. Loki wished, sometimes, that people weren't so predictable.

The tilt of Sif's neck bespoke her curiosity, but she said, "If you're so certain, you'd be willing to lay a wager." She lifted the wineglass from his grip, finally, to take a delicate sip.

Certainty had little to do with it. "I _have_ been admiring your new throwing knives," he noted.

"And I," she returned, "your new mare."

"A _horse_ ," he repeated, "for a pair of knives?"

She turned enough that he could see her arch smile. "She's still a young horse. And they are _very_ fine knives. And it's _my_ arse on this particular line."

Loki smiled, and took the goblet back.

*

They were indeed extremely fine knives. He used them often, and was quite disappointed when he had to leave them behind during a strategic retreat in Svartalfheim.

*

Sif _could_ have had any man of Asgard. But she chose with supreme care, picking through offers received in patterns that were obvious, if you were watching. No one with influence over her position. No one who might confirm the inevitable gossip, slithering through the grass the moment she donned armour, that she gained her right to bear arms by baring anything else.

Certainly none of the band, an obvious choice made manifest as first one, then the other two in quick succession, bemoaned to Loki a sad lack of encouragement of their suits.

Thor didn't even notice. Loki would bet the knives all over again on it. Sif had become a comrade, and that was that. He raised her hand in his at their victory feasting, lifting in his other hand a toast to her speed, her decisive action, her prowess.

Loki watched the cant of her body, the flash to her eyes as she looked at anyone but Thor, and wished that people were not so predictable.

*

His brother's was the first other face that Loki perfected wearing.

There were no sinister reasons for it, no jealous reasons, no deeper psychological significance, simply ease. The core of illusion was knowledge, which was why most creations were simply the magician multiplied. When Loki began to branch out, it was easiest to mimic hands he knew as well as his own, an utterly familiar form, a face he knew every expression on.

The first time he managed it, the full transformation, after weeks of practicing, he ran to show Thor, racing down the corridors, skidding into his rooms. It had taken Thor a moment to even look up from whatever he'd been doing - buckling something, Loki hadn't been paying attention - but when he had, he'd gone white. Bone white and wide-eyed, so palpably shocked to the core that Loki had let the illusion fall, pretended he'd lost it in laughing so hard, that it was that difficult.

It wasn't.

*

Another evening, Thor and Sif throwing knives in what had been idle display for approximately three moments before both of them addressed themselves seriously to the competition. Too seriously for one of the onlookers, at least, a buxom blonde piece who waited for an opportune moment to twine her arms around Thor, tilt his bearded chin towards her whispers.

Loki joined Sif at the target, the twist of her mouth owing little to how tricky some of the blades were to extract. He tugged one free, then another, placing them on the palm she held out, and said, "I don't know why you do it to yourself."

The knives slithered together until she managed to get a proper grip. "What?"

Loki glanced pointedly back to the other side of the hall; Thor was chuckling against the woman's neck, his hands on her hips. Sif managed to smack Loki in the elbow with the target as she unhooked it from the wall, and he laughed himself.

She dropped it all, target and knives, by the wall; someone would put it away, or it would sit there until next time, who knew. Who cared? Sif folded her arms and glared at him. "He's a comrade," she declared, voice low. "That's all."

There was something a little gratifying in the fact that she didn't dissemble a little more, pretend not to know what he meant. Thor would have. Then again, with him there was always the possibility that he actually wouldn't know, wouldn't follow, was on an entirely different page. "That's not all you want," Loki pointed out, easing in closer. "Why should _they_ get him? They're not worthy."

Her gaze turned, over his shoulder, and Loki didn't look, watched her face instead. Didn't need to look, had seen this a dozen times or more, the poses that went with that sort of giggle, and the low burr of his brother's voice. A dozen times or more, with a dozen girls or more, and he knew - as well as Sif knew, looking up now, meeting his eye - that in the morning the girl would be brushed affably aside, and Thor would come down to join them for breakfast, cheerful but unmoved.

A corner of Sif's mouth quirked. "No thanks," she said. "I'm not like her."

She shifted, to walk away, and Loki said, "There's another option," even as the idea unfurled in his head like a flower.

Sif lifted an eyebrow in query, and Loki drew a focusing breath. He had his back to the hall, and she was staring suspiciously into his face, so that was where he seated the change. Let his eyes change (subtle enough) on a blink, and bloomed the illusion out from there - deeper set, brows heavier but paler, his wink cheeky.

Her reflexes were excellent, he knew that already, and her arm strong; her slap exploded his vision into stars, and Loki was laughing before he could even see again. She crowded him, hissed, "You're appalling."

He caught her elbow as she turned away, a blind grab through his dizziness, and tugged her back against him, side on. "You're tempted," he diagnosed, closer to her ear than he'd anticipated. The smell of her hit him like another blow, rosewater and wine over echoes of sweat and armour oil.

It stayed with him even after she'd yanked her arm back and stalked away.

*

Loki hadn't forgotten it - he never forgot things, you never knew what might be useful when - but he didn't think about it further, until Helheim. Or more specifically, afterwards, because at the time there was very little room for thinking about anything save how to extract them from this fucking mess. The vale below was seething with drones, only a matter of time before they caught a trace of the trail up this spire, but their path back to the gate - and the Bifrost beyond - was narrow and well-guarded. Loki had watched it for five minutes (skidding into a vantage point while the others were fussing over Fandral) and found no sign of a gap they might exploit.

Thor joined him, his mail shirt cutting cold rings against Loki's neck as he leaned out to scan; Loki elbowed him back before someone spotted his golden bloody head. "If I could just get the hammer," Thor huffed.

"Well, you can't." They could even see it from here, the only thing holding the gates open.

"What if we--"

"Even you cannot move that fast, brother," Loki cut him off, sagging to a seat behind their outcrop. "You really want to be stuck here with corpses for company until someone _else_ thinks it's a bright fucking idea to beat down death's door?"

Thor sat back on his heels and glanced at Loki, just once, and smiled. "You have a plan."

Loki never had a plan. He had possibilities and audacity, an abundance of both. He drummed his fingers across his kneecap, and said, "They'd obey their queen without question."

Loki was already building her in his mind - the cold, elegant length of her - by the time Thor's eyes widened on understanding. "We saw her for scant minutes," he objected, low and intense; he grabbed Loki's forearm. "Loki--"

Loki shook him off. "So let me concentrate." He met Thor's hard gaze head-on. "I can do this."

It was a long moment before Thor nodded, with unease squatting uncomfortably behind his eyes. "We'll be ready," he stated, and strode across to where the others had finally got Fandral's breastplate unbuckled. The abused metal rang quiet like a bell at the blessed relief of pressure.

Loki took a breath, and closed his eyes.

Queen Hel herself stalked across the narrow bridge, her gait smooth as midnight silk, her prisoners bound in iron in her wake, her ire terrible to behold. The guards fell to their knees at her approach. One of them seemed near ecstasy.

"I want these... _miscreants_ ," Hel spat the word like a shard of ice, "out of my realm. Now."

"Your majesty," the big blond prisoner tried, but Hel rounded on him. Her backhanded slap rang like thunder from the terrible metal of the gates, but the growl in her throat was worse, the sound of an iceberg calving into an uncaring sea. The prisoner staggered, subsided, went meekly as he was ushered to the gates, and through.

"Oh, _ás_ ," the Queen said, as though a careless afterthought, "your implement."

The blonde one took up the hammer, and the guards watched in puzzlement as the gates began to swing shut, Hel on the far side of them still.

And then there was the brightest of lights...

*

Loki collapsed gasping on the burnished floor, a babble of voices exploding above his head. He pressed his fingers down to stop their trembling. His face was cold with sweat, and the world was a blur. Not merely the change, but glamours to help the guards believe an imitation that was patchy at best, to believe in bonds that didn't exist. He sagged further, arms buckling, his forehead coming to rest against the floor and his harsh breath fogging its surface.

Hands dragged him to his feet, Volstagg bolstering him on one side as Thor ducked under his other arm, wrapped it around his shoulders, crowing, "My brother!"

As Loki straightened, he met Sif's gaze. She was staring, at him, not as though she had seen a ghost, but as though she had seen a... possibility.

And that was when he remembered.

*

Loki was the toast of this celebration. And Fandral, for carrying on after the blow that had laid him flat, and Sif and Hogun for clearing their path back to the gate, and Volstagg for carrying Fandral, and Thor (when Loki turned the honour back) for taking them all into Helheim in the first place. Odin graced the feasting for a few benevolent moments, to lift a flagon with Thor and shake a gently admonishing finger, bestow a fatherly shoulder pat upon Loki. Later, inevitably, there was music and dancing.

When Loki bowed before Sif, held out his hand, she gave him a skeptical look, but eventually her hand in return. Over her shoulder, as he straightened, Loki saw Thor disappear onto the balcony, his mouth close to the delectable neck of a flaming redheaded girl.

Sif moved with a warrior's grace, as did Loki; dancing with her was as great a pleasure as fencing, and he knew she didn't get to do it as often as she'd like, building bonds with her brothers-in-arms while other ladies were led to the floor again and again. One round of the steps passed with no words to distract them from the movements, but when they found themselves at rest, on the edge of the formation for a moment, she said, "This victory is yours." When he glanced, she was looking directly at him. "We'd all still be there, but for you."

They were swept back into the dance, but when she was brought back to him, turning close with his arm around her waist, he said, "I have my gifts, as do we all."

They passed down a chain, to the end of the hall nearest the balcony, and if Loki were charitable, he could blame the forced sound of her mockery on the exertion as she said, "Your _gifts_."

She was a warrior, and had a warrior's fitness. Loki took a step nearer, breaking the pattern of the dance, and said, "Did you not think I could deliver what I promised?" She turned away, but he caught her hand. "Sif."

" _Loki_." She named him, he thought, quite deliberately, with great care, turning to fix him with her glare. She was at her most beautiful when angry.

"Anything you want," Loki said, quiet against the beat of the music around them. "And no one need know."

She wanted to hold onto her rage, clutched it like a shield, but she couldn't shout at him in public (could, wouldn't, not about this, not with so many enthusiastic ears listening in). She turned stiffly towards the nearest exit (the balcony) looking back once to see if Loki were following (he was) so she was three steps out into the balmy night before she noticed someone else was already out there.

Two someones, Thor and the redhead, though all they could see of her was the pale sheen of her thigh in the moonlight where her dress was rucked up by Thor's hand beneath it. The rest of her was obscured by the pillar he had her up against, and that was fine, she wasn't really important.

Sif turned on her heel; by the time Thor even glanced up, she was pushing past Loki back into the hall. Loki let her go, tipping a nod to his brother's answering smirk.

*

Loki was last to the training court, walking in lacing his bracers as Hogun hit the sand - by the look of his leathers, not for the first time either. Sif straightened above him, and pulled her hair, clinging with sweat, away from her neck. "Come on," she said, with a grin that was more teeth than joy.

The others were leaning against the gallery railing. "Should someone spell him?" Loki asked as he joined them.

Thor turned his head, gave Loki a nod in greeting. "She's in a mood," he noted. Just fact, no censure; of all of them, Thor was the one most given, in general, to moods.

"Scared?" Loki asked, with a grin ready when Thor looked back, not actually intended to goad, this time. Loki leaned back to lift his eyebrows at the other two.

"Injured, remember?" Fandral responded, with a certain smugness.

"Just finished breakfast." Volstagg, at least, had the grace to look a little sheepish about it.

"Pathetic," Loki said cheerfully, and Thor chuckled and smacked his shoulder.

The moment Loki stepped onto the sand, Sif's eyes were on him. Hogun, squaring up again, glanced over his shoulder to trace her distraction. His face was always impassive, but Loki could read a touch of relief in the twitch of his mouth. "May I cut in?" Loki asked, genial and polite.

Hogun's palm smacked against his as they passed. Sif sneered. "You haven't even warmed up."

"I'm as warm as I need to be," Loki replied. It had been years since Thor had last randomly abushed him in a corridor, but longer since Loki had last left his room without being entirely prepared to face the possibility. "But thank you for your concern." He faced her, just out of striking distance, and let his smile curl a calculated fraction into a smirk.

She launched, sand spraying from her heel. He turned side on, dodged the fist she'd expected him to, took the follow up kick on his bracer, turned her foot away, caught a glancing elbow against his ribs. He pushed her away with a heave against her body - all the purchase he could manage - and split: he stepped left as the illusion lunged right, drawing a strike that he caught at her wrist. Pulling her further off balance, he jabbed a blow at her kidney that she grunted at, already turning with the momentum; the kick that should have knocked him clear off his feet just sent him staggering back a step, dragging air, letting her go.

Back to square one in seconds, him breathing a little hard, she twisting to stretch out her side as she watched him with a knifeblade smile not quite on her lips. He attacked this time, a feint she let whistle past her ear, a follow-up she deflected, stepping inside his guard to thump her fist into his ribs. Same place as before, and he couldn't stop the wince, but he bore it, taking the moment to tangle their legs and send them both crashing to the ground, his knee on her thigh, his weight on her. Even as he pinned one shoulder, though, she belted him hard in the face with the other hand, throwing him off as the world spun. Just a moment too much of dizziness. She was on him, while he was still on one knee, grappling his limbs towards immobility. Loki twisted, a frantic lunge to make the illusion he split off (breaking free) seem believable, but she ignored it completely, bearing him down with leg and hip and her forearm across his throat.

That was it. She didn't need him to yield, that wasn't how the band did things, not when it was clear she'd won. But she stayed there a moment longer, pushed her elbow a little harder, and Loki gasped, "Sif!"

She leaned in (and the scent of her hit him like another blow, sweat and leather over the memory of rosewater) and whispered, practically against his ear, "My quarters. Sunset."

Then her weight was gone, Loki blinking in sunlight and freedom and the dappled mocking applause coming from the gallery. By the time he sat up, she was stalking out of the court, sweeping blithely past a chortling Thor. "That how it's done, brother?" Thor called out.

Apparently, it was.

*

Loki assumed she'd chosen sunset to give her time to change her mind, but he went through the day (a trip to the healing rooms to have his bruises grudgingly salved and the split in his lip sealed; hours of cantrip drills in his rooms; totally findable at all times) without hearing another word from her.

The corridors were quiet when he went through them to her rooms, everyone readying themselves for one evening entertainment or another. He stopped outside her door, his reflection dull and fogged in its burnished surface. He took a breath and closed his eyes. Drew his brother around him, layer by layer, like a cloak, like peace, like immutable truth.

He didn't need the confirmation of his reflection to know it was perfect.

Her face was blank from the moment the door swung open. Not a twitch as she looked him over, top to toe, but for an instant he thought perhaps she was going to shut him out again. He wasn't sure how he'd feel about that. But when her hand moved, it was to tangle in his tunic front, yank him inside. As his back hit the closed door, her hand on his shoulder, it occurred to Loki for the first time that he might have caused even greater mischief by sending Thor to her door this evening.

Then Sif kissed him, like an attack, hungry and ruthless. Loki pulled her closer, a hand on her hip, a hand in her hair, fingers spanning her skull, gripping her like a prize as he met her head-on, kissed her hard and thorough and filthy. None of his brother, no channelling required. She was a warrior of Asgard, she was grace and steel. Kissing her was like wrestling her was like dancing with her was like standing in hostile territory with her back against his. He wanted it all. He wanted everything.

The light was as thick and crimson as blood when he eased into her. She arched against him, her teeth in her own lip, but her eyes open, watching him, fixed upon him. As though perhaps she were looking for a slip.

Actually, it was easier like this, magic thudding with the blood through his veins. Always easier with emotion, not mentality; in the thick of battle and now, now as he rocked against her, inside her, _with_ her, and he could no more untangle this from himself than he could stop, not while she tilted her hips up to meet him, opened her mouth against his on panting breaths, dug more bruises (these visible) into his muscles with her fingertips. She was grace, and steel, and coming apart beneath him with a keening sigh, drawing him after her.

*

The light had turned towards blue, drawing an indigo veil over the room and her skin damp beneath his hand, her ribs rising and falling as their breathing returned to normal with the speed of trained and fit warriors. She opened her eyes - slowly, as though it were difficult - and looked at him.

"Beautiful," Loki said. Because she was. Because she always had been. Because someone needed to tell her.

She shuddered, her eyes dropping closed again, and turned away, first her head then her body, slipping from beneath his fingers as she rolled across the bed to sit upon its edge. (And Loki had the voice perfect as well, he knew it; what use a silent illusion?)

"Get out," she said, barely loud enough to be heard in the still room, but hard as a knife's blade.

Loki hesitated nonetheless, sitting in her still-damp bed, but her head did not turn, her back resolutely towards him. He hesitated, and then drew on his trousers. Took up his tunic.

He stood in the hall outside her door, the evening air cold on bare skin that still was not his own as he unpicked the illusion with fastidious slowness, let it dissipate like a slow trickle of snowmelt.

In all the time it took, no one came past. No one found him there. No one saw. (She did not reopen her door.)

He gets away with it. Depressingly often. All too easily.


End file.
